Kicking up a stink: Ukraine’s Lviv blighted by trash crisis

July 17, 2017 8:52 am

By AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, LVIV, Ukraine, Jul 17 – Ukraine’s western city of Lviv is famous for its picture-postcard graceful domes and cobblestone streets but it’s not such a pretty sight in the back alleys, which are blighted by growing mountains of garbage.

Waste has not been removed from some neighbourhoods in the city of 700,000 people since May, with the stench scaring off tourists and a rat infestation threatening public health.

The trash piles have built up due to an apparent political impasse between the Ukrainian government and the authorities in the city, arguably the most European-looking in the post-Soviet nation.

Kiev accuses Lviv’s mayor of failing to handle waste management but the mayor blames the crisis on a “garbage blockade”.

Last month, locals took action into their own hands, blocking city streets to protest about the situation, with some even setting fire to the mounds of waste.

Lviv resident Mariya Sydorovych, 58, told AFP that despite summer heat of more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) she does not dare open the windows.

He said the problem started in May 2016 when the main landfill for Lviv’s waste caught fire and four firefighters died, prompting state authorities to shut down the site.

“But since then we have a problem of where to move our 600 tons of garbage daily,” 48-year-old bespectacled Sadovyi lamented.

“With 5,500 landfills in Ukraine, I thought that we would be able to solve the problem but all these landfills began to close to my city one after another.”

The embattled mayor went further, accusing the government of pressuring landfill owners across the country not to accept refuse from Lviv in order to discredit him not just as mayor, but also as leader of the Samopomich political party.

Sadovyi was once an ally of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko but Samopomich (Self-Reliance) left the president’s ruling coalition bloc last year, joining the opposition.

“The reason (for the blockade) is that we prevent the authorities from realising undemocratic plans,” Sadovyi said.

“This is a political issue more than economic,” Vadym Karasyov, the head of Kiev-based Institute of Global Strategies, told AFP.

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